Installing the HipHop plugin

First step is installing my HipHop plugin (https://github.com/lorenzo/HipHop), just drop it in app/Plugin and enable it using CakePlugin::load(‘HipHop’) in your app/Config/bootstrap.php file. This plugin contains several useful scripts to adapt your application for the new environment.

Keep in my that HipHop only supports Mysql and SQLite as databases for your project, but unfortunately, the PDO implementation Facebook did does not behave exactly the same as the original PHP implementation. For that reason the plugin bundles a somewhat modified Mysql source that you need to use if you expect your application to work correctly when compiled. This is a database.php example: B0x1A2

Generating the class map

HipHop does not implement any kind of automatic class loader, so we need to provide a complete list of classes to be used in your application, this is a big difference between the hphpi interpreter and the compiler. Your CakePHP application will run just fin in the interpreter, but it won’t after compiling if you are unable to tell it where your classes are. For this purpose, the plugin bundles a shell that needs to be executed before compiling your code:

app/Console/cake HipHop.ClassPath

The previous command will generate a file under app/Config named incules.php containing hard-coded include statements for all your files containing classes. It is extremely importart you have only 1 class per file, also avoid having files combining class definitions and procedural code.

Next step is to copy the file from app/Plugin/HipHop/Config/webroot/index.php to app/webroot/index.php

cp `app/Plugin/HipHop/Config/webroot/index.php app/webroot/index.php

Main difference between both files is that the one provided by the plugin includes the class map before dispatching the request. This enables the compiler to know beforehand where to find any needed class.

Test driving it

Copy the app/Plugin/HipHop/Config/config.hdf file in your application root folder, and edit it. Your will find comments inside the file of how it should look like, this is one example:

Server {
    Port = 80
    SourceRoot = /home/lorenzo/cakephp
}

VirtualHost {
    * {
        Prefix = hiphop.local
        RewriteRules {
            * {
                pattern =    ^(.*)$
                to = /app/webroot/index.php$1
                qsa = true
                    conditions {
                            * {
                                pattern = ^/(css|js|img)/*
                                negate = true
                            }
                    }
            }
            * {
                pattern = ^/(css|js|img)/(.*)$
                to = /app/webroot/$1/$2
                qsa = true
            }
        }
    }
}

Run the interpreter in server mode for the first time using your application source. Go to the root folder containing your app directory and execute the following command:

sudo ~/dev/hiphop-php/src/hphpi/hphpi -m server -c config.hdf

Change directories accordingly if you did not follow the guide and setup the folders as suggested. After running this command you will be able to access http://localhost/ and start browsing your application, you can also provide the -p option to select a different port like 8080 if you don’t want to run the interpreter as super user.

When you have tested every feature in your app, and feel comfortable with results, it is time to start compiling your source.

Compiling your application

When compiling your source expect a lot bumps in the road. Hopefully you won’t have different problems that I had, so the plugin is already bundling a solution for those. Compiling the source requires a full list of files to include in the resulting binary, as always use the plugin to produce it:

app/Plugin/HipHop/Config/scripts/generate_list

Previous command will create the files.list file. Right after generating the list, use the following command to compile your application:

~/dev/hiphop-php/src/hphp/hphp --input-list=files.list -k 1 --log=3 -v "AllDynamic=true"

Expect it to fail. It will complain about missing PDO constants. Let’s take care of it with the following command:

app/Plugin/HipHop/Config/scripts/fixconstants

It will run a search and replace function inside /tmp/hphp* (there should be only one directory matching the expression) fixing any incorrectly exported symbol. Now cd to the build folder and start the process again:

cd /tmp/hphp* && make

Be patient, it will take some time. Hopefully the compiling process will finish without errors, and it will produce a binary file named program, be ready to execute it for the first time.

Copy the program executable anywhere you like, I put it again into my application root folder. Run it for the first time:

./program -m server -v “Server.DefaultDocument=index.php” -c config.hdf

Browse your application again and make sure everything runs as it should, and be amazed at the speed and how much concurrent connections it can handle at the same time.